


On the other side

by RoxaneInkheart



Category: Original Work
Genre: A lot of swords, Attempt at Humor, Boys In Love, Competition, Dragons, Drama, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Families of Choice, Fantasy, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Friendship is Magic, Girl Saves Boy, Heroes to Villains, How Do I Tag, Humor, I Don't Even Know, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I'm Not Ashamed, Knights - Freeform, Love, M/M, Magic, Male-Female Friendship, Mental Health Issues, Princes & Princesses, Quests, Romance, Royal Court, Tragedy/Comedy, Unrequited Crush, What Was I Thinking?, Writing Exercise, beware of pragmatists, english is not my mother tongue, i'm french and that shows, will they kiss or kill each other ?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-24
Updated: 2020-09-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:07:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26635612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RoxaneInkheart/pseuds/RoxaneInkheart
Summary: Desmond is twelve when his mother is locked inside of a mental hospital. He's also twelve when he finds out that all the magical and dreadful stories she used to tell him before bed time are real and that the man who's standing on his porch with a bloody sword and an armor is in fact his father, and he's there to take him with him.He then enters into the Other Side, a world as cruel as it is beautiful, in which nightmares come alive and bloodsheds are rife.A world in which any well-born young man reaching sixteen must compete for the princess's hand and the crown.A world that does not admit failures, and reward mistakes with death.(I'm French but I'm trying my best to write in English, please don't hate me if you find any mistakes!)
Relationships: Original Female Character & Original Male Character, Original Male Character & Original Male Character, Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 2
Kudos: 1





	On the other side

**Author's Note:**

> As I said in the summary, I'm French and I've never written a story in English before. BUT. I can't write in french right now, because of a stupid writing block. Therefore, I'm trying a new exercise which consists in writing in another language (english) to fight this f***ing blank page syndrome. And it works. For the moment. x)  
> You can of course correct me if you find any syntax errors or grammatical quirks. :)
> 
> Hope you'll enjoy my story full of gay knights (ahem), bad-ass princesses and weird dialogues.  
> The first chapter is very childish since the main character is twelve at the beginning of the story.

At first, it’s nothing but cries. They fill the staircase like vivid dreams pounding against the walls. But they don’t arouse the boy who’s sitting on a white bench, his feet barely touching the linoleum floor of the hospital. He doesn’t flinch when the cries turn into roaring and echoes of frenzy. He just sits there, unaware of the sceptical look the nurse sitting on the other side of the corridor behind her desk is aiming at him, hands interlocked on his lap. Seconds flee, hours extend. It feels like forever before the cries stop and the metallic gates which lead to the medical care service open on a woman wearing a navy-blue dress and an apron. She tilts her head to the nurse with the sceptical look, but when she speaks, her words are for the boy.

“You are still there. Why are you still there?”

The boy’s eyes widen. He opens his mouth but doesn’t speak.

“You should be home, by now”, the woman in the navy-blue dress continues with a frown, “Have you any idea what time it is?”

“Yes”, the boy answers, “It is time I see my mom.”

The woman in the navy-blue dress laughs, but it isn’t a real laugh. It’s an exhausted one. The one you come up with when you’re about to collapse from sleep deprivation. The boy hopes she won’t collapse in front of him right now. He had enough of his mother being seized by these men in white, pushed in a car like a recalcitrant bull, and nearly dying before him today not to add a « collapsing incident » to the list. Maybe he should offer her his seat, he thinks. But he doesn’t. Instead, he asks:

“Where is my mom?”

And the nurse who observed all their exchange says:

“You won’t see her today. You’d better go home, now. You’d better call your dad or someone to pick you up before the night comes”. “I’ve got a phone, here, if you want”, she adds, gesturing toward an old-fashioned phone.

The boy stiffens. A dad. He doesn’t have a dad. It was always mom and him. Only him and mom. He doesn’t even remember having a father. No, it was only Mom, her strange handwriting, her nails painted ink black, her hair-raising stories at midnight, her dark wavy hair, and her strong scent of pine trees which saturated every room of their tiny house. Only Mom and the worlds she made up for him before the night, crowed with lazy princes and remorseless knights, damsels holding knives and killing monsters without mercy, faeries playing tricks on mortals, and minstrels singing folk ballads about a thousand of drowning empires. But, of course, he cannot say that to the nurse. She already thinks his mother is mad, and if she hears the stories, the beautiful and bewitching stories Mom used to tell him, she’ll have a reaction which he’s not sure he wants to see. « Always beware of pragmatists », his mother used to say with a faint smile, « because they could falter your dreams and make you think that none of them was ever real ». And, as far as he knows, this lady looks deadly pragmatist.

“I prefer to stay here and wait for my mom, please, madam”, says the boy, sinking back into his seat.

The women exchange a look. The nurse seems irritated but for some reason, the woman in the navy-blue dress and the apron nods and takes off her shoes. It’s a strange thing to do, in a mental hospital whose floor appears quite dirty, the boy thinks as he watches her bare feet contrasting with the dull colour of the linoleum. Punchy pink alongside boring mouse-grey. Yet, the boy appreciates this weirdness. He loves eeriness in general. It makes him feel at ease. He was always the crackpot at school and everywhere else his mother took him with her. Still too skinny with strange yet courteous manners that made him look older than children his age. Carrying books he never properly read under his arm. Stumbling against the reality like a blind man without his cane. Listening to his mother with total dedication. Oh, she loved her eccentric son, his mother. She supported his quirks with a fierce smile that has made rude people back away. The same people who still looked at them with petty curiosity, trying to decipher if his mother was a whore or just a crazy woman, and him just a lunar boy or a waste of time and money.  _ And who was the father _ , people asked behind their closed curtains.  _ Where was he? Was he dead or alive? _ Finally, they had decided that the father’s identity was trivial and the mother was crazy.  _ Unstable _ , they said. Unable to take care of a child, moreover, nobody wanted. It was easier to lock away the oddity. Easier to pretend it wasn’t there than acknowledge that the world was multi-faceted. 

Sometimes, the boy wishes he could think in that kind of linear, sluggish, and boring way. But not today. Because today, his mom is in a jail full of fears and prejudices. And it is because of all these people and their preconceived ideas. He wants to cry, or maybe start a war. 

“You never told me your name”, the bare-feet woman says.

She paces along the corridor, her back always turned upon the gates she came from. Does she want to forget the cries, the tears, the terror, and the pain? Does she want to let the pre-filled syringe she put in his mother's arm without her consent slip from her memory? Because  _ he _ will not forget. Even if he tried, he knows he won't. It's written on his face and etched in his heart. The disbelief. The horror. The agony. It’s now a part of him, a scar he’ll bear forever. His mother was taken from him. And it hurts. It feels like there is a thunderstorm in his head, nails scratching his skin et digging into his collarbone. It feels like dying slowly. Is it possible for a boy to cease to exist when his mother is gone? It sounds like it is. Perhaps was he only alive for her to tell him wonderful stories. 

“You know my surname”, the boy replies. “It’s the same as my mother’s.”

The nurse snorts but the bare-feet-still-wearing-a-navy-blue-dress-and-an-apron-woman smiles. Again, it’s a tired smile. It does not reach her eyes. It’s a shame, the boy thinks, because she’s got pretty blue eyes. The color of the sky when the rain is coming. How many storms can a human battle before surrendering to a meaningless and draining life? 

“How old are you, young man?”

“I’m twelve, going on thirteen. When the moon will be full, I’ll be a teenager.”

He says that like it’s a prophecy, his voice deep and vibrant. That’s what her mother did. “Every now and then, dreams die and people age”, she used to say, “so as you grow older, you have to catch your age with your mind and your voice, as if it is a bird, and in order for it to drag along the magic, you have to say it properly. Like that: I’m thirty-four, going on thirty-five. When the sun will descend in the sea and set fire to the world, I’ll be a magician. It is really important no to forget our age nor our imagination. Otherwise, you don’t grow, you wither.” His mother, the boy thinks, was a wise woman. Although wisdom is often misinterpreted for madness. 

“Does that scare you?”

The boy frowns. A lot of things scare him. His age is not one of them.

“I just wish I could be eighteen instead of thirteen. You wouldn’t have to keep my mom here, then. I would be in charge of her security and nobody could raise an eyebrow and tell me what to do with her.”

The smile of the bare-feet woman vanishes as he speaks, and soon she looks severe as she was before taking her shoes off. Perhaps oddity doesn’t suit her, after all.

“You know you can’t look after your mother for the rest of your life, right? She’s… She’s dangerous.”

“No, she is not!”, the boy prompts in a rather though tone. “Because you don’t understand her doesn’t mean she’s threatening.”

“That was not what I meant. I’m just saying… Your neighbors called. They heard her crying and broking things. They were afraid for you, and I think they were right for calling us. It was not the first time, they said, that her behavior was alarming. Apparently, she often let you sneak out of school… She did not cook you proper diners. And her working activities remain unclear…”

“A writer”, the boy interrupts, “Mom is a writer. Besides, I can cook myself dinner. I’m twelve, not a jellyfish. Also, putting my mother in a mental hospital won’t help her to make the best meals in the town.”

The bare-feet woman stands here, befuddled, her eyebrows so high-raised that they disappear under her bangs. The boy is quite fond of his logic. This is obviously not the case with the nurse who, hidden by a pile of documents, had grabbed the telephone handset, giving him a piercing glance.

“Yeah. Sure. Anyway, you’re not staying here tonight. We don’t have extra beds, and you certainly can not sleep on this chair”, the bare-feet woman manages to say. 

“I’m not going anywhere”, the boy replies as the nurse adds “I’m calling a taxi, Ann. And requesting the lady who called us to look after the kid.”

“I don’t want Mrs. Robinson to look after me, thank you. She’s a nasty piece of work, and I despise her. Also, she doesn’t even know my name.”

“It’s legible since you won’t give it to me either.”

“Names are powerful, I can’t just hand over my identity to one of the people who locked my mom in an asylum.”

“Maybe you could give away that wicked tongue of yours, then”, the nurse grumbles.

Or maybe he should cut hers off. He doesn’t say it, though. It’s unusual for him to lose his temper. Anger is not an easy feeling to deal with. “Anger is like fire”, his mom kept telling him, “sweet at the start and ravenous when stung”. The boy was never good with fire. He liked water the better. The salty smell of the tricky sea and the melancholy of the gentle rain pouring down his windows. Sometimes, he would go for a solitary walk in the woods on the outskirts of the city. When it rained, he would climb a tree and stand still for hours listening to the drops fall and turn the forest ground into a river of clay. The forest vault is where stories come to life, after all, there are often chopped in trees and written over their dead bodies. The rain punctuates the stories and humes them to those who dare to listen to them. Rain is the oldest bard in the world.

“I think Ann was clear enough, kid”, the nurse says through her clenched teeth, “you must go, now. A cab is waiting for you in front of the grocery store at the corner of the street.”

“You can visit your mother tomorrow”, says the woman wearing a navy-blue-dress and an apron, still bare-feet. “I’m sure she would love that, don’t you?”

However, the boy remains silent. But it’s a stubborn silence. One which condemns the shut eyes of people too frightened to discern the fabulous from the monstrous and the real from the marvelous. The people who don’t allow a child to see his mother when he needs her the most. So, he just jumps off his sit, turns around, and, alone, he walks away toward the Great and Treacherous World, his hands folded in his sweater’s pockets. He does not look at the black car parked near the grocery store and walks all the way through the growing night to the house his mother raised him in. 

It’s a long hike, and the cold bites his lips like a jealous lover but he doesn’t seem to care. He doesn’t see the grey buildings raising in the starless sky, he doesn’t notice the stares of the people he passes. The world is a concentrate of ashy shades and ruined hopes. 

Today, Desmond is twelve years old. His mother is gone and the front door of his house swings open to the silhouette of a man in armor with a bloody sword at his belt. Today is the day Desmond’s world falls apart. Today is the day his story begins. 


End file.
